Men are exhausted from being told,
“If you would just apply yourself, you would be better. But you really won’t get better because you are what you are—a sinner.”
This paradox, delivered so often to men in the church, tells men they can’t be trusted but need to try harder anyway.
Religious leaders who tell born-again men they are simply “sinners and a mess” and who then get mad at those men when they sin and make a mess—hmmm. How is that helpful?
Until the healing and training of men becomes the central mission of the church and not just one of the many ministries it offers, men aren’t going to find what they need within its walls.
Programs and service often land on a man like chores: he’s glad to do them (and needs to do them), but he won’t get Life from them. When sin plays on a man’s heart with guilt and shame, he will serve in the church out of a sense of obligation rather than freedom.
The gospel is about way more than just being forgiven for sin. Wonderful though that is, if we stop there, then we’re vastly short-selling the hugeness, the surpassing glory, of what God has accomplished through Jesus…
The gospel is about restoration, a future, and a hope.
Much of who a man becomes and what he settles for has been “learned” over time and through the shaping experiences and conclusions he makes during his life.
Can you imagine the sum of all our conclusions, all the beliefs we hold in our hearts, being accurate? Some of them, yes…but all? No way. We all harbor inaccuracies, lies about ourselves, others, and God, which we have learned to hold on to and all too often hold us. These lies arise from wounding moments, they then become ways in themselves, and our wounded ways infect us and in turn affect others.
It is therefore of paramount importance that we experience healing and treatment so that something glorious and good can replace the pain, guilt, and shame. Just as wounded hearts wound other hearts, so a whole heart can help other hearts become whole as well. The damage is reversed and the wound is redeemed. What was intended for bad, God makes good, so now what is passed down comes from the good stored up in the good and noble man’s heart. That is everyman in Christ’s TRUE IDENTITY.
We need to receive from God the good things we didn’t get and give to him the bad things we did get.
We need to experience the reality of being Beloved Sons; then we’ll be able to take our rightful place in the story God is telling and the part he has created for each man to play.
We bear the image of the Beloved Son and in turn are and are becoming Beloved Sons. God wants his image-bearers back so he can heal them, train them, equip them, and then turn them loose into a battle where many are waiting for the sons of God to enter the fight for freedom.
In your Time alone with God, ask Him:
Father God, what is in the way of me experiencing the reality of being a Beloved Son?
Jesus, what wounds; hurtful moments where shame, guilt and fear were the packages delivered to my heart, are still unresolved in my heart?
